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Sex scandals involving evangelists are not new. The first one occurred back in 1926, when the leading radio evangelist of the day, Aimee Semple McPherson, was allegedly involved in a doozy with a married man. On May 18, 1926, the 35-year-old McPherson arrived at Ocean Park Beach in California with her secretary for a day of swimming. Shortly after their arrival, McPherson disappeared. McPherson's mother delivered a sermon that night in place of Aimee and informed the congregation that Aimee was 'with Jesus.' The following day, hundreds of concerned parishioners ventured to Ocean Park Beach to look for their beloved Sister Aimee. One parishioner drowned and another died of exposure in the unsuccessful search. Not long after Aimee vanished, Kenneth G. Ormiston, the married engineer of the radio station McPherson owned, also disappeared. Five weeks later, Aimee emerged from the Mexican desert in a town just across the border from Douglas, Arizona. She claimed she had been kidnapped, drugged, tortured, and held for ransom in a shack. Aimee further stated she had escaped from her captors and walked 13 hours through the desert to freedom. Her story was implausible, to say the least. No shack was ever found. Aimee's shoes showed no signs of a 13-hour desert trek. (Moreover, they had grass stains on them!) She was last seen wearing a bathing suit, but reappeared in a dress and wearing a wristwatch she hadn't taken to the beach. Several witnesses claimed they had seen McPherson with Ormiston at various motels during the 35 days she was missing. McPherson and her mother were eventually charged with obstruction of justice, but the charges were dropped early the following year. Tags:AimeeSempleMcPhersonscandalAdded: 15th December 2007Views: 5153Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

The hero of the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich was American Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals in swimming and set seven world records in the process. Here is an IOC profile of the great Spitz. (His feats are being relegated to the history books because of the sensational exploits of Michael Phelps at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.) Tags:MarkSpitzOlympicsswimmingAdded: 15th August 2008Views: 1579Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, American Shirley Babashoff was supposed to be the female version of Mark Spitz. Babashoff was a threat to win six gold medals. Instead, she won just one gold medal and four silvers. In every race she lost, she lost to an East German. The star of the East German women's swimming team was Kornelia Ender (pictured here). Babashoff was immediately suspicious of the East Germans because of their muscular builds and deep voices. She claimed the dressing room 'sounded like a coed room.' At the time, Babashoff was criticized as a sore loser. The press dubbed her 'Surly Shirley.' After East Germany collapsed in 1989 the truth came out: East German athletes were regularly given steroids via injections to increase their athletic capabilities. Babashoff now campaigns to have the East German medal results nullified. Tags:KorneliaEnderEastGermanyswimmerssteroidsAdded: 24th August 2008Views: 23114Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

Mark Spitz, the star of the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics with his seven swimming gold medals, was featured on this issue of Sports Illustrated. Tags:SIcoverMarkSpitzswimmingAdded: 20th January 2009Views: 767Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

Harold Holt, the 58-year-old prime minister of Australia, who had been in office only 22 months, vanished while swimmiming in the ocean late in 1967. On the morning of Sunday, December 17, Holt together with friends Christopher Anderson, Jan Lee and George Illson and his two bodyguards, drove down from Melbourne to see the British yachtsman Alec Rose sail through Port Phillip Heads in his boat Lively Lady to complete a leg of his solo circumnavigation of the globe, which started and ended in England. Around noon, the party drove to one of Holt's favorite swimming and snorkelling spots, Cheviot Beach on Point Nepean near Portsea, on the eastern arm of Port Phillip Bay. Holt decided to go swimming, although the surf was heavy and Cheviot Beach was notorious for its strong currents and dangerous rip tides.
Ignoring his friends' pleas not to go in, Holt began swimming, but soon disappeared from view. Fearing the worst, his friends raised the alarm. Within a short time, the beach and the water off shore were being searched by a large contingent of police, Royal Australian Navy divers, Royal Australian Air Force helicopters, Army personnel from nearby Point Nepean and local volunteers. This quickly escalated into one of the largest search operations in Australian history, but no trace of Holt was ever found.
Two days later, the government made an official announcement that Holt was presumed dead. Deputy Prime Minister John McEwen was sworn in as caretaker Prime Minister until such time as the governing Liberal party could elect a new leader.
There were many rumors surrounding Holt's strange death, including claims that he had committed suicide or faked his own death in order to run away with his mistress. The mystery became the subject of numerous urban myths in Australia, including persistent claims that he was kidnapped (or rescued) by a Chinese submarine, or the far-fetched claim that he had been abducted by a UFO. Tags:AustraliaHaroldHoltPMvanishesAdded: 6th February 2014Views: 995Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, some swimmers from developing countries were given wild card entries even though they were nowhere close to being world-class swimmers. The most famous of the bunch was 22-year-old Eric Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea. Nicknamed Eric the Eel by the British press, Moussambani had only learned to swim eight months earlier. Because there were no swimming pools in his country, Moussambani practised in a lake. He had never seen an Olympic-sized swimming pool until his memorable 100-metres freestyle heat. Moussambani's two rival competitors in his heat (Niger's Karim Bare and Tajikistan's Farkhod Oripov) were both disqualified for false starts, so Eric the Eel was on his own. Here's the clip of his heat--in which he clocked a glacial 1:52.72. The gold medallist in the men's 100-metres freestyle won the event in just 48.30 seconds. Tags:OlympicsEquatorialGuineaEricMoussambaniswimmerAdded: 16th February 2014Views: 1188Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

On September 9, 1954, Canadian teenager Marilyn Bell became the first person to swim across Lake Ontario. Some 300,000 onlookers witnessed her arrival near the Canadian National Exhibition grounds in Toronto 20 hours and 59 minutes after Bell began her swim in Youngstown, NY. Bell's feat was actually made in defiance of CNE organizers who had offered a $10,000 prize solely to American marathon swimmer Florence Chadwick. (Chadwick abandoned her effort after becoming ill. The CNE did award Bell the cash.) The straight-line distance of the swim was about 32 miles. Bell, who was a month shy of her seventeenth birthday, swam an estimated 40 miles while battling fifteen-foot waves and lamprey eels. Bell later swam both the English Channel and the Strait of Juan de Fuca before retiring from marathon swimming in 1958. Tags:MarilynBellLakeOntarioswimmerAdded: 6th September 2009Views: 1957Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

Eighteen-year-old Jesinta Campbell, the reigning Miss Australia, intends to wear this...uh...interesting (yeah, that's the word!) costume in the upcoming 2010 Miss Universe pageant in Las Vegas. It features high-heeled Ugg boots, a brown one-piece swimming costume hand-painted by an Aboriginal artist, and a lamb's wool shrug. The ensemble is topped off by a voluminous flamenco-inspired rainbow skirt. The outfit has been heavily criticized by fashion designers and ordinary Australians alike. One newspaper's editorial denounced the garb as a 'travesty' and a 'national joke.' What do you think? Tags:MissAustraliacostumepageantAdded: 29th July 2010Views: 1389Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

These four swimmers represented Great Britain at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. They won the gold medal in the 4 x 100 relay. My research says they are Belle Moore, Jennie Fletcher, Annie Speirs, and Irene Steer, although I don't know which one is which. (I don't know who the dour lady in the middle is. A chaperon or coach, perhaps? She looks like a million laughs.) Women's swimming made its debut in these 1912 Olympics. The British team's winning time was five minutes, 52.8 seconds. By comparison, the gold-medal-winning time of the Australian team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics was three minutes, 52.69 seconds--more than two full minutes ahead of the 1912 pace. The entire 1912 Olympic swimming program was contested in just one day. Tags:OlympicsswimmingBritishwomenAdded: 21st September 2010Views: 3814Rating:Posted By:Lava1964

During an 11-day period during a 1916 heatwave, five people were attacked by sharks along the coast of New Jersey. Only one victim survived. These well chronicled events inspired Peter Benchley's famous novel Jaws. The first attack occurred on Saturday, July 1 at Beach Haven, a resort town off New Jersey's southern coast. Charles Epting Vansant, 25, of Philadelphia was vacationing at the Engleside Hotel. Before dinner, Vansant decided to take a quick swim in the Atlantic. Shortly after entering the water, Vansant began shouting. He was rescued by lifeguard Alexander Ott who pulled the bleeding Vansant from the water. Vansant's left thigh had been stripped of its flesh. He bled to death on the hotel manager's desk.
The second attack occurred 45 miles north of Beach Haven at the resort town of Spring Lake, New Jersey. The victim was Charles Bruder, 27, a hotel bellhop. Bruder was killed on Thursday, July 6, 1916, while swimming 130 yards from shore. A shark bit him in the abdomen and severed his legs. Lifeguards Chris Anderson and George White pulled Bruder into their canoe but he bled to death before they reached the shore.
The next two attacks occurred on Wednesday, July 12. They shockingly took place in fresh water in Matawan Creek near the town of Matawan, 30 miles north of Spring Lake and 16 miles inland! Around 2 p.m. some local boys, including Lester Stillwell, 11, were playing in the creek at an area called the Wyckoff Dock. A dorsal fin appeared and the boys realized it was a shark. Before Stillwell could leave the creek, the shark pulled him underwater.
Stillwell's friends ran to town for help. Several men, including local businessman Watson Stanley Fisher, 24, came to investigate. Fisher jumped into the creek to find Stillwell's body, but he too was attacked by the shark in front of several horrified witnesses. Fisher was pulled from the creek without recovering Stillwell's body. His right thigh was severely injured and he bled to death at Monmouth Memorial Hospital in Long Branch. Stillwell's body was recovered 150 feet upstream from the Wyckoff Dock on July 14.
The fifth and final victim, Joseph Dunn, 14, of New York City was attacked a half mile from the Wyckoff Dock nearly 30 minutes after the attacks on Stillwell and Fisher. The shark bit his left leg, but Dunn was rescued by his brother and a friend after a vicious tug-of-war with the shark. Dunn was taken to Saint Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick. Dunn lost his leg, but otherwise recovered. There is some debate whether just one shark was responsible for all five attacks. However, there were no further attacks after a shark, that was found to have human bones in its stomach, was killed. What prompted the rash of attacks in 1916? One grisly theory is that Atlantic sharks had grown accustomed to feeding on humans after German submarine attacks.
Tags:sharkattacksNewJerseyAdded: 7th December 2010Views: 3935Rating:Posted By:Lava1964